


Like A Crash Test Car.

by etacanis



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Angst, Inspired by Poetry, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Non-Linear Narrative, Romance, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-26
Updated: 2012-05-26
Packaged: 2017-11-06 01:46:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/413361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etacanis/pseuds/etacanis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Walt still tastes like cherries and whiskey and he leaves little dots of red on Ray's white t-shirt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like A Crash Test Car.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Richard Siken's _Little Beast_. Title is taken from the poem - _I wanted to take him home and rough him up and get my hands inside him, drive my body into his like a crash test car_.

1.  
It's some bullshit excuse of socializing, Marines in polo shirts and flip flops and their wives and their kids all strung together with charcoal meat. It's _bullshit_ because they're strung together by killing (and admittedly, one time, that whiskey tango barbecue in Iraq) and it's blatant that nobody knows what to talk about, they definitely can't mention crates of tomatoes or dead civilians or dead people in general in front of little gap toothed girls.

Ray wishes he had the balls to not come, like Brad. Instead he hovers by the food with watery piss beer and makes chit chat like he's in the line at Walmart. It's only ever _worth_ his time is when a wife with thighs that didn't used to rub together forces a husband (husband, father, marine in these moments, killer comes last) into a shambling dance on the grass because that shit is _gold_ for blackmail. Rudy, unsurprisingly, is the only semi-decent dancer. He fucking loves it though, just like he loves everything fruity.

The first barbecue that Walt comes for though, that's a little better, because he sticks by Ray's side and cracks ridiculous, awful jokes all night and laughs when Ray gets food all down himself and shares his slice of pie with cherry stained fingertips. He brings whiskey too, decent stuff, and hides it underneath his sweater so nobody tries to steal it, because they _would_.

"I'm going to kiss you," Walt says, later, when they're by themselves, when they stand in the dark. He doesn't, not right then, instead he pushes himself on a swing and Ray stares into the dark and listens to the creak of the chains.

Incidentally, when they kiss, an accident but a compulsion and beautiful, horrible, perfect, all at the same time, Walt still tastes like cherries and whiskey and he leaves little dots of red on Ray's white t-shirt that never come out.

They make an agreement without words to go someplace else, because Ray's got a roommate and somehow, Walt's ended up on Brad's couch. The motel is shitty, there's holes in the walls and the springs in the mattress bruise their backs but Ray doesn't care particularly much when calloused, sure hands trace patterns of shadows onto his skin.

2.  
"If you have to explain," Walt says, accent soft and smooth and crackled by the shitty phone line. "You're admitting you failed."

"I didn't," Ray says, and hopes it just sounds like the connection's cracking his voice too. 

3.  
Ray's only looking through Walt's drawers because the apartment is freezing and he's sure if his feet would feel waxy to the touch, and wouldn't that be funny, surviving Iraq and losing his feet in Virginia because Walt's landlord won't fix the fucking heating. He doesn't mean to find a photo of himself and a post it note he'd left on Walt's fridge, a cock scrawled in the corner to make up for the fact he was leaving a note, not when he can look up and see a smiling blonde ex-girlfriend, front and center for everyone to see, not hidden away in a fucking sock drawer of all places.

It's not that he doesn't understand, not that he particularly cares about being Walt and Ray instead of _WaltandRay_ even when he knows, because he's been told, that it's still _WaltandJessica_. It's not about anything like that, it's just about the fact he's kept between ratty socks with holes in the toes. 

Walt's watching him from the doorway, legs tense like he think he might have to chase Ray, like Ray's going to leap out of the fucking window into the snow over something so insignificant. 

"Didn't your mom ever teach you how to darn your socks, dude?" he says instead, holding up a sock with holes in the toe and the heel. He drops it back into the drawer and the photo is covered and Walt relaxes.

4.  
Ray knows what people, chicks mostly, think of Walt's eyes, because he's heard them. Whispering loudly like they're not even trying to hide, retarded things like _you could drown in those eyes_. Ray can't agree with that, but he can agree with the sentiment, because he's had those eyes fixated on him too many times to count, in situations most people can't even begin to understand.

At night, in bed, in the shower, on the floor and that one memorable time on the dining room table, he holds his hands to Walt's back and feels the muscles shift, feels them work and strain. He kisses like a bite and he arches into Ray's hands and it's like his skin can't contain him, the ripples and the pull and the tug of muscles as he breathes as moves and pulls into Ray.

It's his smile that gets Ray though, that wide and ridiculous white smile that makes his stomach burn with desire, makes him want things he shouldn't want, makes him want to bruise those lips and that skin. It's always made him want to touch even before he identified what he wanted, before he figured out that he wasn't just going insane from lack of sleep and lack of food and too much time spent driving and not enough time to jack off over memories of short skirts hitched higher.

5.  
For a while, they both think they're going to be okay. That the nightmares and the pain is gone, that they've gotten over it, like you get over the loss of a relationship that wasn't great to begin with, or the way you get over losing twenty dollars

That's not the way it goes.

6.  
Ray thinks he fell somewhere in Iraq, in between desert and city and a stomach that never stopped complaining of hunger and so many cigarettes his lungs wanted to break open. Somewhere, for a man with a gun in his hands (but there were lots of men with guns in their hands), a man who stood in a car made for sitting, a car that didn't go very fast at all, a man who laughed at a bottle of ripped fuel and smiled through the jitters and the non-stop noise, most of the time, at least, and not at all.

He might have fallen in the parking lots, pressed up against rented cars and then Walt's car and then Ray's pick up and then in the shadows of the stairwells in their apartment buildings. In the winter, when the windows were frosted and he convinced Walt that really, it was better if they just stayed in bed all day and kept each other warm. In the summer, on the beaches of California, when he convinced Walt that really, it was better if he wore as little as possible.

It might have been when he couldn't sleep, and somehow Walt knew from across the country and called him to talk about nothing in hushed voices until there was silence and snuffles of breath from his end.

7.  
They fight, properly fight like they're trained to, not with words but with fists and cuts and bruises and knuckles that smart and bleed and stain their shirts red in an imitation of that cherry stain whiskey kiss first time. They stand on a curbside together, bleeding and bruised and broken and it's just another interval in their story, not the first time, not the last time, a relationship of perfect moments stuck together with the smell of blood.

"Shit," Walt says. "Sorry." His lips are brighter than usual, and when Ray spits it's streaked like raspberry ripple.

"Yeah," Ray says. He squints at Walt through an eye that's already swelling shut. "Me too."


End file.
